There are no sacred cows on this list of popular games we just don't get.

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Everybody has at least one: a game that, for one reason or another, just never appealed to you despite its presence on the "best games of all time" list for many people. A game that you're almost ashamed to admit to hating in polite company, for fear that you'll be branded a gauche iconoclast (or, worse, an ignorant troll). A game that makes you question not just your tastes, but the concept of popular taste as a whole. I mean, what do people see in that game? This is an anthology of those games for some of Ars' editors.

We go into this list knowing that our picks are going to be baffling to some of you, and that we're in the extreme minority with most of these picks. That's kind of the point. Before you accuse us of just trying to "stir the pot" with intentionally subversive picks, know that the author of each of these blurbs truly and honestly just doesn't like the game being discussed. Also know that, no matter how popular a game or series is among the general public, we fully believe that every game has its flaws, and that there is no title that can (or should) be universally loved by literally everybody.

With that, let the slaughtering of the sacred cows begin!

Dragon's Lair

by Kyle Orland

I was too young to catch the whole Dragon's Lair craze in the '80s, but I distinctly remember the first time I saw the game sitting alone in a movie theater lobby sometime in the early '90s. My reaction can be divided into three distinct stages.

Stage 1 (After seeing the game's "attract mode" animation from across the lobby): Holy crap? What is... how do they get graphics like that? Is there a VCR under there? The whole game doesn't really look like that, does it? No... it can't. Can it?

Stage 2 (After putting in a dollar—A WHOLE DOLLAR—to try it out): Oh my god, the game does actually look like that! I'm actually going to get to control a real cartoon! This is so awesome!

Stage 3 (After making a total of one correct move before dying three times in succession): What the hell was that? That sucked!

Dragon's Lair seems to keep getting ported to new platforms in the decades since I first saw it had that arcade experience (most recently winning a coveted Steam Greenlight spot), so there must be some market of nostalgia-filled gamers whose opinions of the game probably gelled during Stage 1 and 2 above. And while I can appreciate the artistry of the animation, which still holds up today, I find the see-a-flash-and-hit-a-corresponding-button gameplay just truly, utterly, stupefyingly bad.

This isn't just sour grapes after one tough arcade play either... I spent a good deal of time struggling with a CD-ROM version years later just so I could see more of those wonderful, fluid, moving drawings. It didn't change my opinion one bit. As a short film (or even a choose-your-own adventure "interactive" movie), Dragon's Lair would be amazing. As a game, it's awful.

Gears of War

by Sean Gallagher

For Christmas in 2006, there were two things on my wish list: An Xbox 360 and Gears of War. I wasn't disappointed on Christmas morning—the disappointment wouldn't arrive until some time around New Year's.

There were some innovative things about Gears of War's combat engine (shoot from cover! OMG!), and it held up well in multiplayer. But the single-player campaign came nowhere near living up to the wave of hype that Gears of War rode in on. The plot was plodding and monotonous. The AI for "squad members" and the list of commands available to direct them made them more of a liability than an asset most of the time. And then there were the absurd mechanics of that chainsaw assault rifle.

Unfortunately, after the Xbox 360 etched a scratch into my first copy of the game, I actually had to buy a second before I figured out it probably wasn't even worth paying for once.

Halo

by Lee Hutchinson

Halo, how I dislike thee. A first-person shooter with few redeeming qualities, it's the kind of game that would have been released into obscurity had it not been a launch title for the original Xbox. The game sported mediocre graphics, a cliche-filled and unoriginal single-player campaign, and a tired and uninspiring set of multiplayer options. In spite of these detriments, its position as the only multiplayer first-person shooter available to Xbox users guaranteed its success. Apparently when you're dying of thirst in the desert, any drink will do, even if it's your own pee.

Halo's success is particularly cringe-worthy considering how ridiculously inferior it was to first-person shooters available on PC. Its contemporaries include classic AAA titles like Aliens vs. Predator 2, Ghost Recon, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, all of which were vastly superior to Halo in every way but one: they weren't available to Xbox users clamoring for a way to frag their buddies.

The game spawned a plethora of (much better, actually fun) sequels and has legions of fans, but the first game in the series was just plain bad.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

by Andrew Cunningham

I think it was Twilight Princess that ultimately prompted me to give up on modern Zelda games. From the outset, there was something about it that felt perfunctory. It was obviously trying very hard to build a deeper, story-driven game on top of Ocarina of Time's sturdy foundation. And while there were certainly moments of greatness strewn amidst TP's bloated, 30-something-hour running time, in the end it just felt like Zelda-by-the-numbers. Get your sword. Go to the dungeon. Find item (dah dah dah daaaaaah!). Beat dungeon and boss with item. Explore around until you finally find the next dungeon. Repeat.

Twilight Princess was really just the culmination of a long-running trend. Both Zelda and Mario, two of Nintendo's biggest flagships, are respectful of their roots to the point that they sometimes feel fenced in by their conventions. But Mario has taken what made the original games so fun—precision platforming, great level design, and pick-up-and-play gameplay—and pushed it to the fore. Newer games have even forgone the tiresome, empty hub worlds of Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy in favor of a format that puts as little time between turning on the console and playing a level as possible.

Zelda, on the other hand, has taken the best elements from the NES and SNES entries—puzzle solving, exploration, and swordplay, in roughly that order—and weighed them down with over-long tutorials, interminable cutscenes, and fetch quests that pad the games' running time without really adding much to the fun. Twilight Princess added insult to injury by replacing the precise button controls with gratuitous controller waggling (in the Wii version), making it by far my least favorite entry in the series (though, to be fair, I haven't even given Skyward Sword a chance after Twilight Princess scared me off the series).

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367 Reader Comments

Super cheezy story (not in a good way), a terrible slog of an engine, and the funniest part was people though the "AI" was good. They changed one variable to make the line-of-sight ridiculously far and idiots mistook this as great AI. This is the same AI that would walk in-place infinitely if there was a column too close. The AI was laughable bad - but you get shot from unseen enemies, so it must be good -- right?

To paraphrase Valve: "Getting killed by things you can't see isn't any fun."

I also see no not-love for PS3 exclusives. I do not know about you, but a game that does not want to be played - as in long conversations between action scenes - deserves to be in that list. That game is, you guessed right, Metal Gear Solid 4. Somebody timed one a given action break at over sixty minutes. Some people I know were turned off when they realize they were mostly watching an interactive movie that they could not figure out as they have not played previous games.Another one that made my brother avoid any other installment of a given franchise is Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, not to be confused with the proper GT5 game. Prologue is sort of a demo of new things to come, at a time when Microsoft had Forza out for its own console. However, it was not a free demo, you had to pay for it. So people feel like this one was a rip off.There was a lot of hype regarding Brütal Legend, I hope you remember. This one is multiplatform. It looked like a brawler in the demo, where you did actual cool things like descend a mountain of skulls with some heavy metal band music at the background, but the game is and plays like an RTS, hybrid or not. I payed full price for it, but never got over the snowy mountains (middle act?).

In Dragon's Lair, the sword scabbard keeps shifting from left hip to right hip and back again, making it a bit bizarre to watch. About a third of the scenes are repeats. But except for those two points, its was fun to *watch*. Paper Mario with the jagged bubbles was just painful to watch.

What I most dislike are games with unfair *brick wall* scenes that make the game impossible (for me) to continue.

The choice of Halo is, well mandatory. But really, being the only FPS in a console guarantees success? I guess the folks that made Area 51 on the PS2 or Turok in the N64, or Resistance on the PS3 would like to have a word with you. The argument may be that the only reason for success was that it was on the XBOX, but from where I stand, is plain to see that the only reason for the hate is that, well, it was on the XBOX. Halo did a ton of things right (not going to discuss) and easily stands above all those games listed.

I'd also disagree with the Wii Sports choice. It's true that to a large extent the game was smoke and mirrors, but it was damn good smoke and mirrors and the only set of s&m that actually worked on the console. We all may have grown tired of the genre, but as far as motion controls go, it remains unsurpassed. It certainly had a gentle curve, and I'm sure it was intentional, with everyone learning the new gameplay and the intent of capturing the casual market. I reckon the reviewer never played enough to get to the highest levels. It does get tough and it's not unfair or cheap.

I'm glad to see twilight princess get the review it deserved. The description of taking the good elements & weighting them down with extra crap is apt. Control of Link was so unbelievably bad tat I couldn't be bother to care enough about the gimmicks to finish the game. soon after the wagon cart chase where you shoot persuers with the horrible bow control, I just up & quit bothering with it. .

I'm also highly in agreement with the the comments about FF7 being piss poor compared to FF6 , FF7 was a terrible game with a crap childish story & poor 3d graphics (even for the time)I played umm... XII? recently & felt similar . Sure the graphics were pretty, but they completely stripped out anything like player choice, to say the game was on rails is an understatement, no subplots, no exploration, just one long straight line that sometimes turns left or right instead of north.

Wiisports was lame, but I don't remember much fanboism from real people.

I completely agree that Halo does not deserve all the knobgobbling it got, there were far better FPS games out at the time, being the only xbox multiplayer fps game is the only reason it was more than a footnote like duke nukem3d... but at least when duke was the first one to do stuff like it's intractable world & such, it really was the first to do that kinda stuff in 3d at all.

Every post Playstation Final Fantasy game should be on that list. Being a big fanboy of Final Fantasy in the 90s, Final Fantasy X was one of the worst games I've ever played. The only reason I finished it? "Well, I wasted this much time on it hoping it'd get better, might as well just be done with it". Seriously, the story in that game was flat out awful. To the point where I was laughing in disbelief at some scenes and dialog. The turn based battle system was stupid. The Sphere Grid? The worst idea for leveling up in any RPG ever. Each FF game since has gotten progressively worse as well.

Uncharted deserves to be on that list. Every single one of them. Most boring games ever to be released. The actual gameplay graphics are blurry and extremely low resolution, the combat is stupid, the writing is bad. Need I go on? The only reason these games get praise is because the PS3 has no good exclusives so people have to latch on to something.

Gran Turismo 4 and 5. The Playstation Gran Turismo games were fantastic for the time. Gran Turismo 3 was a good graphics show case for the PS2 but didn't change the gameplay much. Gran Turismo 4 was delayed with every promising feature, like online play, removed prior to release. Gran Turismo 5 was an absolute joke. The track environments look like they're right out of Gran Turismo 4 on the PS2 with some detail removed (go to Digital Foundry if you don't believe me), and the frame-rates are down right terrible, dropping as long as 17 frames per second (again, go to Digital Foundry). By the time GT5 came out we had Forza 3 and then Forza 4 the following year, both games better in absolutely every possible way.

Saints Row needs to be on this list. Everyone talks about how great Saints Row 3 is. I tried it. It was freakin stupid. Nowhere near as good as Grand Theft Auto.

Metal Gear Solid games. The first was very good. But every sequel has gotten more boring with each new release.

Killzone games. The first game was absolutely terrible in every respect, with a stupid story. The other games are essentially the same thing. Why has this game gotten so much praise? Oh thats right, just like Uncharted, PS3 has no good exclusives so people have to latch on to something.

I feel sorry for my colleague Andrew, it is sad that he cannot appreciate the true greatness of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

BO-RING. The best Zelda is either the first one or the third one, and my favorite is probably the second one. Anything post-Ocarina is too boring to deal with.

And whoever mentioned FFVII, you're spot on because that game is no good. I liked FFX more than I think most people do though; they changed the combat to be more fast-paced and gave you a good reason to use every character. I quit playing FFIX on the third or fourth disc when they split your party up and you're stuck trying to fight with characters you've barely used.

FF6.I hated it on the SNES, and tried it again about a year ago on my PS3. Such a horrible game that everyone can't seem to praise enough. Everyone talks about its story line and to me it was the worse story in any game a shining example of how not to make a story. It flips through so many characters at a break neck speed that by the end of it I just didn't care what happened to any of them. It felt more like they just gathered a bunch of 5 pages stories and tried to in a desperate move to merge them into one giant story. With it switching characters so fast I was never able to "feel" for any of them and this just kills it for me. A great story follows a small group and helps you learn about them and feel for them, it gives attachment and emotion to the characters and helps let the viewer/player feel and like them, something FF6 just didn't seem able to do and understand.

Halflife.To me, it was a overhyped boring FPS. By the time it had already been released in 1998, I had already played the FPS Strife which was released in 1996. Strife had a story line, you talked to people, were able to buy weapons and items, had triggered events, bosses, shooting everyone was a bad thing, etc... Everything that people claimed only Halflife had done and more then Halflife ever did. And Halflife's areas are just bland and boring to me. Sure, Strife didn't have pretty graphics even when it was released (it came out just after Quake and ran off the Doom engine so looked really dated when it was released) but it had so much more to offer that other FPS took many years to even attempt.

Awwww, lookit the Ars editors trying to be all edgy by calling everyone's sacred cows overrated!

Hey, it appears to have worked, I guess, since you got 90 comments on a Satruday. Well-played, I guess, though I didn't think you tolerated trolling on the front page. I guess it's OK for the articles, just not the comments.

My reactions identically. But hey, for every popular item, there will be a bunch of haters. Hell, I hated the Xbox and Halo (mostly because )(*@#&%(* Microsoft bought it and killed the game. Remember, it was shown at MacWorld 99 and was about to come out...).

Of course, around 2005 or so I bought an Xbox and got it for $10 or so on sale, and actually had some fun (I wasn't big into shooters, and didn't play Half-Life). Of course, in 2006 I bought a PC capable of running a shooter and played Half-Life, which I also enjoyed.

Still lousy at shooters, and really if they don't have some backstory (e.g., Halo, Half-Life) I won't enjoy it. Hence why I don't play TF2 (never launched it from Orange Box ever). Nor played Doom or Quake.

So no, not surprised it's on the list (and I have admonished myself at times because I really should've ignored my hatred of all things Microsoft then and just bought an Xbox in 2001 and played it, because I enjoyed it, 4 years later).

Won't comment on multiplayer - like I said, with no story, I find it boring and tedious and I suck .

I was wondering if this list would contain Halo or not. Halo, for me, has always been game I just couldn't get into. It is far from a bad game, but I have never understood the hype around it now or when the first one came out way back when. I feel the same about all the Call of Duty games. Both garner feelings of "meh" for me.

I know I'm in the minority, but I have to say its nice to see Halo on a list of overrated games rather than a list for the best games ever. I've always felt there are good and bad points to every game; it all comes down to what you love in it and what you're willing to overlook in it. There were just too many things in Halo I couldn't overlook. To each their own right?

Halo had its faults (especially the single player campaign mode), but was extraordinarily well play balanced in multi-player which made it very well suited for competitive leagues. Referring to "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" as superior to anything (other than Angry Birds), however, is just a bridge too far, making that segment implausible at best.

Funny part is I really didn't think Halo looked bad at all when it came out, mostly because it's competition were PS2 games. It had nothing on PC FPS's at the time or even some of those before it but that was an often wildly different audience.

Halflife.To me, it was a overhyped boring FPS. By the time it had already been released in 1998, I had already played the FPS Strife which was released in 1996. Strife had a story line, you talked to people, were able to buy weapons and items, had triggered events, bosses, shooting everyone was a bad thing, etc... Everything that people claimed only Halflife had done and more then Halflife ever did. And Halflife's areas are just bland and boring to me. Sure, Strife didn't have pretty graphics even when it was released (it came out just after Quake and ran off the Doom engine so looked really dated when it was released) but it had so much more to offer that other FPS took many years to even attempt.

I agree with you in your critique about half Life, but not you conlusion. It seems that you think its a mediocre game. Its not the revolution everyone claims it to be, but it was really fun, with a good and interesting level design for its time. But the two Half life games is NOT some sort of gods among games that many claim it to be.

I've always hated the level design in the early Halo games more than anything else. It's so abstract, you could mistake what is supposed to be a military base for a shopping mall. I remember playing Metroid Prime at around the same time Halo came out, and loving the attention the detail in the world, how even the most minor rooms had tons of intricate detail in the geometry. It was a far cry from Halo where everything was cubes and ramps.

My reactions identically. But hey, for every popular item, there will be a bunch of haters. Hell, I hated the Xbox and Halo (mostly because )(*@#&%(* Microsoft bought it and killed the game. Remember, it was shown at MacWorld 99 and was about to come out...).

Of course, around 2005 or so I bought an Xbox and got it for $10 or so on sale, and actually had some fun (I wasn't big into shooters, and didn't play Half-Life). Of course, in 2006 I bought a PC capable of running a shooter and played Half-Life, which I also enjoyed.

Still lousy at shooters, and really if they don't have some backstory (e.g., Halo, Half-Life) I won't enjoy it. Hence why I don't play TF2 (never launched it from Orange Box ever). Nor played Doom or Quake.

So no, not surprised it's on the list (and I have admonished myself at times because I really should've ignored my hatred of all things Microsoft then and just bought an Xbox in 2001 and played it, because I enjoyed it, 4 years later).

Won't comment on multiplayer - like I said, with no story, I find it boring and tedious and I suck .

Except that Halo did have an enormous backstory whereas Half-Life just made it all like the x-files. Instead of explaining things just make everything seem more "mysterious" and hope for the best. And BTW... the stuff that went into Halo had been the culmination of ten years of planning. They didn't necessarily spell everything out in the first game itself but they have something called "The Halo Bible" that all the games, novels and other stuff got their inspiration from. Anyone unaware of this should go to halo.bungie.org and educate themselves.

Halflife.To me, it was a overhyped boring FPS. By the time it had already been released in 1998, I had already played the FPS Strife which was released in 1996. Strife had a story line, you talked to people, were able to buy weapons and items, had triggered events, bosses, shooting everyone was a bad thing, etc... Everything that people claimed only Halflife had done and more then Halflife ever did. And Halflife's areas are just bland and boring to me. Sure, Strife didn't have pretty graphics even when it was released (it came out just after Quake and ran off the Doom engine so looked really dated when it was released) but it had so much more to offer that other FPS took many years to even attempt.

I agree with you in your critique about half Life, but not you conlusion. It seems that you think its a mediocre game. Its not the revolution everyone claims it to be, but it was really fun, with a good and interesting level design for its time. But the two Half life games is NOT some sort of gods among games that many claim it to be.

I tried it a few years ago again and still found it wasn't fun at all and bad level design too. But to each their own.

Halflife.To me, it was a overhyped boring FPS. By the time it had already been released in 1998, I had already played the FPS Strife which was released in 1996. Strife had a story line, you talked to people, were able to buy weapons and items, had triggered events, bosses, shooting everyone was a bad thing, etc... Everything that people claimed only Halflife had done and more then Halflife ever did. And Halflife's areas are just bland and boring to me. Sure, Strife didn't have pretty graphics even when it was released (it came out just after Quake and ran off the Doom engine so looked really dated when it was released) but it had so much more to offer that other FPS took many years to even attempt.

I agree with you in your critique about half Life, but not you conlusion. It seems that you think its a mediocre game. Its not the revolution everyone claims it to be, but it was really fun, with a good and interesting level design for its time. But the two Half life games is NOT some sort of gods among games that many claim it to be.

Uhh Halo, really? I guess you never played with friends or were terrible at it. The game was Triple A for a reason, it was fantastic, It was fun, Replay value was huge. The only FPS that had any lasting appeal besides it was Goldeneye.

And a Zelda, really. Honestly? For shame. The only Zelda that should be on this list is the CDI Zelda. Possibly Wind waker.

I don't really know for sure about the others on the list. But those 2 games should be no where near this list. Terrible review you two.

Except that Halo did have an enormous backstory whereas Half-Life just made it all like the x-files. Instead of explaining things just make everything seem more "mysterious" and hope for the best. And BTW... the stuff that went into Halo had been the culmination of ten years of planning. They didn't necessarily spell everything out in the first game itself but they have something called "The Halo Bible" that all the games, novels and other stuff got their inspiration from. Anyone unaware of this should go to halo.bungie.org and educate themselves.

Quote:

Every AAA game ever has a development bible. There's nothing remarkable about that.

Your right. Except that most of them look like pamphlets and others resemble novels. In Halo's case... almost an encyclopedia set. Actually in terms of pure backstory Halo has more than almost every RPG of the last 30 years. (And that's BEFORE the novels came out.) By the time the game came out it was already ten years worth of writing and planning (some of it got carried over from Marathon, it's spiritual prequel.)

There was even the beginnings of the Halo plot stuff onto the CD-rom that shipped with the ancient Bungie game "Myth" (Messages between forerunner AI's, Cortana and other stuff that would be in the final story.) All years and years before the game was to be released hidden in text files on the disc.

The Half Life series is the big one for me. It might be on my top 25 list, but certainly none of them are anywhere near best game of all time for me. People rave about the physics puzzles of Half Life 2, but I found them obnoxious and tedious, essentially the game designers trying to show off their physics engine more than being interesting gameplay. The OP gravity gun sequence is cool, and the characters are memorable, and I'll definitely get Half Life 3 as soon as I can once it comes out, but I will never truly understand why the series is one of the most common choices for best ever.

I agree that Halo 1 is overrated, but it's still a great game, and I agree with a lot of the criticisms of Twilight Princess, but love the game anyway. I actually didn't like it after the first playthrough, but it has grown on me.

The problem with Halo isn't so much that its a bad game it's just that it isn't the greatest fps of its era. It worked because you could play four player and it was well marketed.

4 player multiplayer was around years before Halo, hell I think even doom allowed that many players, starsiege tribes came out in '98 with squad vehicles & 32-128 player multiplayer game options in both squad & deathmatch, halo didn't do anything new, it just did it on the xbox at a time when the xbox had no other fps games doing any of that

The only game on this list that I've ever played (halo 1) is the one of my all time favourites.

It was a damn good singleplayer game, especially on the hardest difficulty level and multiplayer was fun too until hackers got in and spoiled it. I wonder if the editors here ever played it on legendary... the easier difficulty levels were exactly the same but with half the AI disabled — probably they would have died in the first 30 seconds.

That makes me wonder how many other games on this list are also good games.

why is this person comparing console and pc games? picking and choosing when to compare a game for its flaws is not what i expected from this article. i am a die hard halo player and agree the graphics were horrible but the story and game play were unmatched on the console at the time. nuff said...

I agree with everything except I want to point out that the flaws stated for Wii sports is irrelevant when it comes down to what it supposed to be for. It looks and plays like crap but when you have drunk friends or even family playing along, graphics, difficulty, and most of the time, controls don't really matter. Fun is being had and that's what really counts the most. If you are playing by yourself sure, difficulty slider, control problems, and crap ass graphics does pop up more.

Hutchinson, what shooter do you consider superior to Halo for engaging team play? Most people claiming to be "old-school" such as yourself will always fall back on Counter-Strike despite never playing it.

Hutchinson, I'm still waiting for your to explain how Aliens vs Predator has "vastly superior mechanics in every way" compared to Halo. You didn't even define what "mechanics" you were referring to. I would call it laziness to resort to such hyperbole without providing a single point to defend it, but it seems much more like incompetence. Oh wait, my bad, you claimed to have old-skool cred so you must know what you're talking about.

To get us started, I will name one very important mechanic that made team play in Halo good compared to other titles - the recharging shield. You win a battle and you're rewarded by gaining your shields (but not health) back. This is imperative to avoid the monotonous trading of kills that lesser teams will try to resort to, especially in objective games such as flag/bomb where you must go into the other team's base to make progress. It gives you a fair chance to win multiple encounters in succession instead of being ground-down to zero health/shield within a couple encounters.

The fact that you get moderated up for refusing to clarify such statements is indicative of the pro-author bias that you see whenever an author decides to comment in their own article. Any criticism, no matter how legitimate, is seen as an act of hostility and is dutifully down-voted by the forum sheeple.

Blacken00100 wrote:

Grieviant wrote:

Hutchinson, what shooter do you consider superior to Halo for engaging team play? Most people claiming to be "old-school" such as yourself will always fall back on Counter-Strike despite never playing it.

TF2.

Debatable. TF2 is a good game. I personally don't think the class-based system and focus on large teams is superior to everyone-starts-equal 4v4.

Perhaps Ars staffers are too young to go back that far, or they assume the majority of their readers are too young (or both)? I'm only 39...

I had thought of that, though I'm 'only' 26, and have been gaming since I was 3. What's the entire staff of Ars Technica possible excuse? At the very least, the Gaming Editor had an actual game that was more than a decade old.

I'm happy to post page after page of disses on popular games I don't like, on any system you'd care to name, going back to about 1984 when I got my first Atari system. I'm not sure how relevant my screed against Yar's Revenge would be, though, or my angry rantings against the IBM-compatible Temple of Apshai Trilogy.

The staff here has plenty of old-skool gaming cred and I'll throw down against anyone who wants to argue 80s and 90s video gaming anywhere, any time. You pick the time period, system, and genre, and I'll supply the vitriol. If you're gonna front, youngster, you better bring it.

I am sick and tired of people beating up on Halo. For story elements ALONE Halo beats the crap out of 95% of shooters. Lackluster graphics? BS. For the time they were great and... the physics alone were great. Also... it was more finely tuned and with less clipping errors and "cruft" from other shooters of the time. You guys just love beating up on Halo but it's one of the richest scifi plotlines out there. It may borrow from some things... but hell... movies borrow from other movies. Just because it borrows doesn't take away from the fact it's got tons of great original story elements. (And I do mean tons.) Halo is also one of the only games where the novels written about it are actually supplementary versus just being a bunch of "made up crap on the side." (Like the Tom Clancy game novels)

I find it funny you pick on Halo 1. It speaks to your ignorance of the game universe. It had the best story. Halo 4 is the first game in the series to get even close since. Halo 2's story was "ok" but Halo 3's was an unmitigated disaster. Anyone who thinks Halo 2 or 3's story was better than Halo 1 was just "late to the party" and now suffering from cognitive dissonance. Basically you can translate this as: "I wasn't impressed by Halo 1's graphics so I didn't play much of it. Later I'll say it was lacking in storyline to cover up for this fact." (Halo 2 was actually a response to you idiots. That's why it had all the texture pop-in because you screwballs are so graphics focused they tried to cram it all in.) By the time Halo 3 came about they figured out graphics is 95% of all anyone cares about so they threw the story out the window. (Thankfully 343 industries is fixing this now with Halo 4 and Spartan Ops..)

Admit it... your hatred of Halo comes from the fact it was bought by Microsoft as an xbox exclusive and you are all a bunch of bigots.

More than any of that I am getting really tired of these Op Ed meaningless puff pieces about "Hey you know that thing you like sucks right?" More news and less of that crap please.

Or, it could be that like they said, they played real shooters on the PC that weren't trite and uninspired crap.